About me

This blogname was derived from the novel The Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby: absurdism as weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. (The subtitle is from a book by Dutch author Renate Rubinstein. It could as well be my motto).
My real name is Martin (Maarten Jan) Hijmans. I've been covering the ME since 1977 and have been a correspondent in Cairo. I started my 'Abu Pessoptimist' blog in January 2009 out of anger during the onslaught in Gaza. The other one, The Pessoptmist, is meant to be a sister version in English. (En voor de Nederlandstaligen: ik wilde in november 2009 een tweede blog in het Engels beginnen en ontdekte te laat dat als je één account hebt, een profiel dan meteen ook voor allebei de blogs geldt. Vandaar dat het nu ineens in het Engels is... So sorry.)

Friday, November 16, 2012

Israel opens a new front: cyber propaganda

Minister Edelstein of the Propaganda ministry in the situation room

The rightist Israeli site Arutz 7 (radio and tv of the settlers)reports about another Israeli front, the hasbara (propaganda) front:
Besides attacking Hamas terrorists in Gaza and hampering their ability to harm Israeli civilians, Israel has been fighting Gaza Arab terror on the cyber front. With social media becoming more important than government announcements or even TV coverage, the government has set up a special “social media situation room” which will communicate to the rest of the world in real time what exactly is happening in the new IDF operation, Pillar of Defense.
The opening of the situation room was presided over Wednesday night by Hasbara and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein. The situation room is working with the IDF, the Defense and Homefront Command ministries, and other official channels, taking the information from all streams and “translating” them for use on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media networks. Until now, the situation room has concentrated on messages aimed at diplomats and the media.Staff in the situation room are in touch with thousands of bloggers and other pro-Israel activists around the world involved in social media (Italics by me AbuP). The messages are sent to these activists, and forwarded on to social networks, blogs, web sites, and other internet outlets. The messages include statements from officials, testimonies from resident under fire, photos, videos, and links to news stories. The messages are sent out in a variety of languages.

Sources talked about 35.000 propaganda activists all over the world. Well, take it as a warning. In the meantime one is reminded of the days that South-Africa was mobilizing all the forces it could muster around the world in order to defend the apartheid...